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I don’t know who started this, but the following quote ended up in Casino Royale‘s trivia section on IMDB: “The three-piece suit worn by James Bond at the end of the film is a navy version of the gray suit worn by Sean Connery in Goldfinger.” Others have repeated this.

Like the iconic grey glen check suit made by Anthony Sinclair that Sean Connery wears in Goldfinger, the Brioni navy pinstripe suit that Daniel Craig wears in the final scene of Casino Royale is also a three-piece suit. And that’s where the similarities end. Both suits are excellent suits, but the basic styles of the suit are different, the silhouettes are different and the small details that make the Goldfinger suit so unique are absent from the Casino Royale suit.

The Goldfinger suit jacket has two buttons on the front whilst the Casino Royale suit jacket has three buttons. The Goldfinger suit jacket is cut with soft shoulders and a full chest whilst the Casino Royale suit jacket is cut with stronger straight shoulders and a lean chest. The Goldfinger suit jacket has a ticket pocket whilst the Casino Royale suit jacket does not. The Casino Royale jacket has wider lapels. Both jackets have straight pockets with flaps and four buttons on the cuffs, and the Casino Royale jacket may also have double vents like the Goldfinger suit, but those details aren’t all that special since that’s what the average suit has.

The waistcoat in Goldfinger has six buttons with only five to button, whilst the waistcoat in Casino Royale is cut with all buttons able to fasten. The waistcoat in Goldfinger has four welt pockets whilst the waistcoat in Casino Royale has only two. The trousers in Goldfinger have double forward pleats, plain hems andside adjusters whilst the trousers in Casino Royale have darts and turn-ups and are worn with a belt. The Goldfinger suit’s trouser legs are narrow and tapered whilst the Casino Royale suit’s trouser legs are wide and straight.

What makes the glen check suit in Goldfinger special? Apart from it being the first three-piece suit of the Bond series, it’s Sean Connery’s only three-piece suit that has lapels on the waistcoat. Pierce Brosnan brought back the lapelled waistcoat with his pinstripe suit in The World Is Not Enough. This key detail, however, is absent from the three-piece suit in Casino Royale. The absence of lapels on the waistcoat is the most significant detail that shows the Casino Royale suit was hardly inspired by the Goldfinger suit.

Magnoli Clothiers, who makes clothes inspired by the clothes James Bond wears, also says the Casino Royale suit “was based loosely on Sean Connery’s classic Goldfinger Suit.” Magnoli adds a ticket pocket and side adjusters to his version of the suit to make it resemble Connery’s suit more, but those details are not present on the actual Casino Royale suit.

Even when people attempt to truly copy the grey three-piece Goldfinger suit, they get it wrong. An attempt at copying the Goldfinger suit was done in Catch Me if You Can, but the suit in that film was made in the wrong pattern, and the style was either Americanised or modernised with squarer shoulders, wider lapels, shorter vents and medium-rise flat front trousers. At least they got two of the Goldfinger suit’s key details: a ticket pocket and lapels on the waistcoat.

James Bond has so far worn 20 three-piece suits in the series, with more coming in Spectre, and the three-piece suit in Casino Royale is no more a copy of the Goldfinger suit than it is of most of the other 18 three-piece suits. Costume designer Lindy Hemming may have wanted to put James Bond in a three-piece suit that could be iconic on the level of the Goldfinger suit, but the significance of the suit doesn’t mean the actual suits have much in common. The Goldfinger suit is iconic because it is not only a very unusual suit, but it also has a significant reveal with James Bond exiting the aeroplane lavatory. The reveal of the Casino Royale suit comes along with the introduction of a more confident and mature 007, and the suit has significance in the character development.

If Daniel Craig’s navy pinstripe three-piece suit could be compared to another suit in the Bond series, it has most in common with George Lazenby’s three-piece navy chalkstripe suit in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Though the Italian cut of Craig’s Brioni suit is considerably different from Lazenby’s thoroughly British Dimi Major suit, the details and overall styles are very similar. The most obvious thing is that both suits are navy with stripes. Both suit jackets button three down the front, and neither jacket has a ticket pocket. Both suits’ trousers have a darted front and a straight leg, though Lazenby’s trouser legs are considerably narrower than Craig’s trouser legs. Sean Connery’s navy three-piece suit in Diamonds Are Forever also has a few things in common with the Casino Royale suit, such as the lack of a ticket pocket, a full six-button waistcoat and darted-front trousers, though Connery’s jacket only has two buttons and his trouser legs are tapered.

To give a definitive answer to the question posed in the title of this article, no, the Casino Royale three-piece suit is by no means a copy of the Goldfinger suit. If someone was trying to copy any suit from Goldfinger, they did a very poor job. That doesn’t mean there is something wrong with the Casino Royale suit, it is just a very different three-piece suit.

I’ve compiled diagrams of many of the checks and other small patterns that James Bond has worn in his suits, sports coat and other garments over the series into one list for easy reference. Stripes have not been included and will be the subject of a future article.

2. Pick-and-Pick

Pick-and-pick (also known as sharkskin) is a simple pattern woven with alternating dark and light yarns in both the warp and weft of an even twill weave. This results in alternating dark and light diagonal lines, which up close look like tiny zig-zags or steps. This pattern is only used for suits. James Bond wears pick-and-pick suits in From Russian with Love, The World Is Not Enough and Skyfall.

3. Glen Urquhart Check

The Glen Urquhart check is made up of large and small checks and woven in an even twill weave. The large check is the houndstooth check (as seen above) and the small check is a two-and-two check woven with alternating two dark and two light yarns in both the warp and weft. Stripes resulting from having four dark and four light in one direction with two dark and two light in the other direction connect the houndstooth check sections with each other. The true Glen Urquhart is woven with black and white or cream yarns. In smaller scales, this check works best for suits, whilst in larger scales it works better for sports coats. James Bond wears suits with this check—with slight variation—in From Russia with Love, Skyfall and a number of other films. This check often comes with an overcheck in red or blue (with the resulting check often and incorrectly called a Prince of Wales check), and James Bond wears the latter in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In Diamonds Are Forever, Bond wears a tweed sports coat with a larger, multi-coloured variation on the Glen Urquhart check. Read more on the Glen Urquhart check.

4. Plain Weave Glen Check

This variation on the Glen Urquhart check is woven in a plain weave. The four-and-four sections become two-and-two (a puppytooth check), and the two-and-two sections become one-and-one. The check that results looks very similar to the proper Glen Urquhart check but with simpler shapes and at half the scale. This check is used only for suits. James Bond wears suits with this check in Dr. No and From Russia with Love. Read more on the plain weave glen check.

5. Hopsack Glen Check

This is another variation on the Glen Urquhart check, but it is woven in a two-by-two hopsack weave (basket weave). The two-and-two sections have the same puppytooth check found on the plain weave glen check, whilst the one-and-one sections form a pick-and-pick pattern. The stripes connecting the puppytooth sections also look different than on the plain weave glen check. This check is used only on suits. James Bond wears suits with this check in Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever. Read more on the hopsack glen check.

6. Gun Club Check

The gun club check is a check made up of intersecting bands of colours and ordinarily woven in a twill weave. The bands are at least four yarns wide. A gun club check can have as little as two colours, but more colours are more common. James Bond wears a gun club check sports coat in The Living Daylights that is made up of five colours, and interesting combinations appear when these five colours intersect.

7. Barleycorn

The barleycorn pattern (also known as crow’s feet) is a tessellation of small pointed chevrons and has its own weave. Bond wears a brown tweed hacking jacket with this pattern in Goldfinger and Thunderball.

8. Broken Twill/Barleycorn

The barleycorn pattern has a simpler variation which is essentially a broken twill weave that changes direction every two yarns. It’s like a herringbone weave at its most basic. The result are upward and downward ticks. James Bond wears a sports coat in brown barleycorn in A View to a Kill.

9. Tick Pattern

The tick pattern is simple check woven in an even twill weave where the cloth varies between two dark and two light yarns in the warp and a single colour in the weft. The result is a pattern of small tick marks. This pattern is typically best used for suits. James Bond wears a tick-patterned tweed suit in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

11. Birdseye

Birdseye is a pattern of round dots on a diagonal grid. It has its own very unique weave. The pattern alternates two dark yarns and two light yarns in both the warp and the weft. In a larger scale the pattern looks like large circles with a dot in the centre. In smaller scales it looks like a simple pattern on dots on a diagonal grid. For example, on the pattern pictured here the smaller light blue dots would hardly show up in a finer scale since the dark blue yarns are woven over those four light blue yarns. If the dark and light colours are reversed it can significantly change the way the pattern is perceived. The navy birdseye suit is a favourite of Pierce Brosnan Bond, and he wears examples of it in GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and Die Another Day.

There are many more unique and interesting checks James Bond has not worn, and there will be an article on those as well.

The Saint’s first episode “The Talented Husband”, which premiered a day before Dr. No on Thursday the 4th of October 1962, briefly introduces Roger Moore’s incarnation of Simon Templar quite similarly-dressed to Bond in a black shawl-collar dinner jacket. However, the first lounge suit Moore wears in this episode is a Glen Urquhart check suit, most likely in grey and cream but possibly in brown and cream. It has a light-coloured overcheck that is probably light blue, which would go well with either a grey or a brown check. The first lounge suit of the series established the generally pared-down look for Roger Moore’s tailored wardrobe in the show’s first four black-and-white series. All of Moore’s suits for The Saint were made by Cyril Castle of Conduit Street in London. Moore later wears this Glen Urquhart check suit in the first series episodes “The Loaded Tourist”, “The Element of Doubt”, “The Man Who Was Lucky” and “The Charitable Countess”, and in second series episodes as well.

The suit jacket is cut with natural shoulders, roped sleeveheads, a full-cut—but clean—chest and a suppressed waist. A low button stance makes Roger Moore’s chest look more masculine and imposing, and narrow lapels add to this effect. The lapels are roughly the same width as Sean Connery’s lapels in his mid-1960s Bond films, but these lapels are the widest of all the suits’ lapels in The Saint. Most of Moore’s other suits’ lapels are a bit narrower and less flattering to Moore’s build.

The jacket is detailed with straight, flapped hip pockets, a flapped ticket pocket and three buttons on the cuffs. This jacket has one major difference from all of Moore’s other suit jackets in the black-and-white episodes of The Saint; whilst most of them have a single vent, this suit jacket has roughly 8-inch double vents. The buttons match the overall colour of the suit—either light grey or light brown—but the buttonholes contrast in a much darker colour. The suit’s trousers have a darted front and frogmouth pockets. The legs are full-cut through the thigh and tapered neatly to much narrower plain hems.

With this suit Moore wears what is most likely a pale blue shirt, which would match the suit’s blue overcheck. If the shirt isn’t blue it would have to be ecru. It has a spread collar and rounded double cuffs. His narrow, medium-dark satin tie—which I guess is red—is tied in a small, asymmetrical four-in-hand knot. His shoes are light brown slip-ons, which are an appropriate match for this sporty suit. Moore wears a straight-folded white linen handkerchief in his suit jacket’s breast pocket.

This episode features the Bond girl actress Shirley Eaton, who, two years later, would go on to play her most famous role: the gold-painted Jill Masterson in Goldfinger. She gives a solid performance with Moore for a great start to the seven years of The Saint.

Q has a long tradition of wearing glen check suits, starting with Desmond Llewelyn’s first appearance as Q in From Russia with Love. Most of the time the suits have a button three jacket, and the suits are often three-piece suits. The suit Q wears in his lab in The Living Daylights is very similar to the suit he wears in From Russia with Love in that it’s a three-piece black-and-white glen check suit with a button-three jacket, cut in a very classic and very English style.

This suit is a black-and-white Glen Urquhart check with a light blue overcheck. The suit jacket has natural shoulders with slightly roped sleeveheads, and it is cut with a little drape in the chest and a gently suppressed waist. The jacket’s natural shoulders go against the trend in the late 1980s for large, extended, padded shoulders, yet Q has very large shoulders himself and more than a little padding would look completely unnatural on him. His natural shoulder line is almost horizontal! The jacket has slanted flap pockets with a ticket pocket, but Q wears the flaps tucked in. However, in a continuity error sometimes the left pocket flap is untucked. Like most classic English tailoring in the 1980s, the suit jacket has double vents. The jacket is detailed with four buttons on the cuffs, and the suit’s buttons are black plastic.

The suit’s waistcoat has six buttons, and Q follows tradition by leaving the bottom button open. The suit trousers are full-cut without pleats or turn-ups. Non-pleated trousers were not very popular in the late 1980s and make Q look outdated to those who followed fashion trends at the time. It’s quite the opposite of what most people think today about trouser pleats, however, the full cut of Q’s trousers through the thigh would still make him look old-fashioned today. Q’s trousers don’t necessarily look outdated so much as they look sloppy.

With the suit, Q wears a sky blue shirt with a spread collar, front placket and double cuffs. His regimental tie is black with a double gold stripe. The tie has a motif of silver Prince of Wales’s feathers badges. The Prince of Wales’s feathers is a symbol of Wales that consists of three ostrich feathers emerging from a coronet. The tie also has a motif of red and green roses. Though I don’t know exactly what this tie represents, I suspect it represents a Welsh regiment of the British Army, going by the badge and welsh actor Desmond Llewelyn’s service in the British Army during World War II. If anyone knows what this tie represents, please leave a comment below. Q also wears an identification tag pinned to his lapel.

Q’s tobacco suede two-eyelet derbys are an interesting choice of footwear for a Glen Urquhart check suit worn in London. The English are known for wearing black shoes with their suits in town, so wearing light-coloured suede shoes with his suit is a dandyish, but stylish, choice. The contrast between the shoes and the suit is unfortunately accentuated by Q’s unstylish choice of black socks. Grey or coloured socks would be a better choice to link the shoes with the rest of the outfit. Q is not intended to be a fashionable or particularly stylish character, though he is well aware of the way he is dressed and there is always plenty of charm in his outfits.

In honour of Sean Connery’s 84th birthday earlier this week, let’s look at a glen check suit he wears in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie that’s quite befitting for James Bond. The lightweight black and white glen check cloth is in a hopsack weave, and it’s very similar to the cloth of the glen check suit that Connery wears in Goldfinger. However, the two-and-two—or puppytooth—section of the glen check has a smaller repeat. The cloth is approximated in the diagram below.

The button three suit jacket has narrow lapels that roll through the top button but not down to the middle button. The jacket is cut with a full chest, straight shoulders on the natural shoulder line and roped sleeveheads, and it has no vent, three buttons on the cuffs and pockets with very narrow flaps. The buttons are grey horn, as opposed to the grey plastic buttons that are on Sean Connery’s worsted Anthony Sinclair suits for Bond. Not much of the trousers can be seen, but they most likely follow the other suit trousers in the film and have double forward pleats, turn-ups and button-tab side-adjusters.

The white shirt—it looks cream, but I suspect that’s due to the way the film is treated because all of the colours have been warmed—has a spread collar, rounded single-button cuffs and a placket stitched close to the centre like on Frank Foster’s shirts. The narrow black repp tie—which isn’t as interesting as the textured dark grenadine ties Sean Connery often wears as Bond—anchors the overall light-coloured outfit by giving the outfit the necessary contrast to flatter Connery’s cool, high-contrast complexion. Because the tie is so narrow, it’s difficult to tell if the symmetrical knot he is using a Windsor or Half Windsor knot. Connery secures his tie with a tie bar that is mostly obscured by his jacket, slightly angled downward and placed about an inch below the jacket’s top button.

James Bond isn’t the only spy Ian Fleming created. Fleming also created Napoleon Solo, the main character in American television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. played by Robert Vaughn. Though Solo, like Bond, is a well-dressed spy, his clothes have decidedly American characteristics. His suits are in an updated version of the classic American sack style, updated both for the 1960s and for a more international look. The second series episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. titled “Alexander the Greater Affair”, which was later turned into the feature film One Spy Too Many, features Napoleon Solo wearing a black and white glen check suit with a large repeat.

Click the image for a close-up of the glen check cloth and ribbed tie

Like the classic American sack jacket, this suit’s jacket has no darts in the front. Instead, the jacket is shaped through the underarm dart and side seam. The shape of an English jacket is not possible without the front darts, but Solo’s jacket still has waist suppression and doesn’t look like a box. The lack of front darts has a clear benefit on this suit: it allows the large check to be uninterrupted on the front of the jacket. Solo’s jacket is updated from the ordinary sack with only two buttons on the front instead of three rolled to two, and the traditional natural shoulders are replaced with padded shoulders that have a slight concave—or pagoda—shape. The jacket has the popular 1960s trends of narrow lapels with very small notches and short, four-inch double vents. The jacket also follows the American tradition of two buttons spaced apart on the cuff, and it also has jetted hip pockets. Black buttons on the jacket match the black in the check but contrast with and complement the cloth as a whole.

The suit trousers follow the American tradition with a flat front, but the trousers are updated with a more tapered leg. The hems are finished without turn-ups, which goes against the traditional method of finishing sack suit trousers. Yes, the American tradition is for flat-front trousers with turn-ups. The lack of turn-ups of Solo’s trousers allows the hem to be slanted, which helps the narrow trouser opening cover more of the shoes.

Solo’s cream shirt, which is likely pinpoint oxford, has a mismatch of styles. It mixes an informal button-down collar, which was a popular collar in the 1960s in America, with dressy double cuffs. Cary Grant was known to wear this incongruous combination, and it can be seen in Notorious. Solo’s narrow, solid black ribbed tie—which is in the spirit of James Bond’s dark textured ties—is tied in a four-in-hand knot. His shoes are black short ankle boots with elastic, similar to the boots Sean Connery wears in Goldfinger and Thunderball. A black leather belt holds up Solo’s trousers.

Apart from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s obvious similarities to the James Bond series, this episode has another connection to the Bond series. Teru Shimada, who would go on to play Mr. Osato in You Only Live Twice, plays the president of a small country who the villain of the story attempts to kill.

In honour of Pierce Brosnan’s 61st birthday we look at one of his many Remington Steele suits. By Remington Steele‘s third season, Pierce Brosnan had, for the most part, traded classic elegance for the fashions of the day. The majority of his suits by that time were low-buttoning double-breasted suits with large shoulders and full-cut trousers, but these suits actually flattered Brosnan’s skinny frame despite them looking very dated now. However, not all of Brosnan’s suits fit the fashionable mould. One of the few relatively classic suits that was still around on the show in 1985 is this dark, cool brown suit in a very subtle glen check, pictured here in the episode “Gourmet Steele”. There are multiple windowpanes over the glen plaid, which are difficult to make out the exact colours of due to the DVD quality. From what I can tell, there are windowpanes in red, tan and blue, but they are very faint. Multi-stripes and multi-windowpanes on top of a pattern like nailhead or herringbone were very popular in the 1980s, but they were usually understated like on Brosnan’s suit. The multiple windowpanes surely aren’t to everyone’s tastes, but on Brosnan’s suit they are done in a tasteful way. Take away two of the three windowpane colours and the suit immediately becomes more relevant to today’s fashions.

The suit is cut with high armholes to allow freedom of movement

In brown with multiple windowpanes, this suit is more of a social suit than a traditional business suit. Since Steele is a private investigator he can wear more adventurous suits on the job than the average man can wear to work, but here he appropriately wears this suit to dinner at a fine restaurant. It’s not a particularly dressy suit, but Brosnan dresses it up for the evening with a white shirt, black shoes and understated accessories. The button two suit jacket is trim-cut with narrow, slightly-pagoda shoulders, roped sleeveheads, a clean chest and a closely nipped waist. It has flapped pockets, three buttons on the cuffs and deep double vents. The lapels have a steeper gorge (the lapel’s notch) than what is typical today, but it’s not too steep or too low. The button stance is in a classic, balanced position. The majority of the suits Brosnan was wearing at the time had a lower gorge and lower button stance, which looks very dated now. The trousers have double reverse pleats and a medium-wide straight leg, and they are worn with a belt.

Brosnan downplays the suit’s coloured windowpanes by wearing a white shirt and unassuming brown accessories. The white shirt has a moderate spread collar, placket and double cuffs. The tie has dark brown and medium brown stripes, which may or may not be the effect of a herringbone weave. The overflowing pocket handkerchief is also dark brown, and even the flamboyant way he wears the handkerchief doesn’t make it stand out. Brosnan could have chosen a blue shirt and red tie to make the windowpanes in the suit pop, but keeping everything toned down makes the outfit look more elegant. The predominantly monochromatic look is reminiscent of Connery’s brown suit and tie in Thunderball, though Connery’s outfit has a simple elegance that is absent from Brosnan’s.

Though brown shoes are typically the first choice with brown suits, Brosnan wears black cap-toe oxfords and a brass-buckled black belt with this suit. One could argue that brown leather would still go better with this suit, but because the suit is cool-toned the black leather doesn’t clash. The suit’s cool tone is flattering to Brosnan’s cool complexion, whilst most warmer and richer browns wouldn’t look so good on him. Connery’s brown suit in Thunderball similarly has a cool tone, and he too wears his brown suit with black shoes.

As a follow up to the Glen Urquhart check article, this article looks at the common smaller variations of the glen check in a plain weave and a hopsack weave. The plain weave glen check is woven in a the simplest of weaves, in which the threads interlace alternately. Sean Connery wears this check in black and cream in Dr. No and in black and light grey at the Hagia Sophia in From Russia With Love. It’s usually the type of glen check found on warm-weather suits, since the simple plain weave is usually lighter in weight and more open than other weaves. The glen hopsack check is woven in a two-and-two hopsack weave, in which two adjacent warp yarns are interlaced with two interlaced filling yarns. Sean Connery’s famous three-piece suit in Goldfinger has this check in black and white as does his suit in Amsterdam in Diamonds Are Forever. This check can easily be found in the traditional contrasting tones—like in Sean Connery’s suits—but also often in dark tone-on-tone colours for City business dress.

The plain-weave glen plaid as worn in From Russia with Love

Whilst the Glen Urquhart check has sections of alternating yarns four light and four dark and sections of alternating yarns two light and two dark, the glen checks in both a plain weave and a hopsack weave have sections of alternating yarns two light and two dark and sections of alternating yarns one light and one dark. In the two weaves sometimes the resulting smaller patterns are the same and sometimes they are different. In both weaves the section of alternating yarn colours two and two in both directions creates a four-pointed star check. It somewhat resembles a miniature houndstooth check, and thus it is sometimes called a “puppytooth” check.

Opposite the two-and-two section is a section of yarns simply alternating one light and one dark in both directions. In the plain weave glen check this creates a hairline stripe, and the stripe is typically lengthwise. In the glen hopsack check it makes a pick-and-pick—or sharkskin—pattern. An all over pick-and-pick cloth is typically woven with similarly alternating light and dark yarns in both directions in a twill weave, but in a hopsack weave the visual effect is exactly the same.

The glen hopsack check as worn in Diamonds Are Forever

The other sections of the cloth have alternating yarns two light and two dark in one direction interlacing with alternating yarns one light and one dark in the other direction. On the plain weave glen check it looks dark and light interlocking combs, but on the glen hopsack check this section looks like jagged stripes.

These glen checks are more discreet than the traditional larger Glen Urquhart check, making them great patterns for an stylish business suit in settings where a larger check can be too much of a statement. In the fine scale of the glen hopsack check that Sean Connery wears in Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever, the check is like a semi-solid and just slightly more informal than an all-over pick-and-pick.